Critical Mass

Critical Mass is defined as an amount necessary to achieve a desired effect. I just looked it up. It's also a "movement" and you should learn more about it, as should I. The act of "Critical Mass" says a lot of different things: we are people on bikes, we are many, we are fragile, bikes are good, we are Americans practicing civil disobedience, come join us, please/thanks for respecting us, we respect you; among many other things. But more affectionately and simply, Critical Mass refers to a fun and crazy bicycle ride that leaves downtown Seattle the last Friday of every month.

Critical Mass on Wikipedia.
Wikia Critical Mass.

We dressed up on Friday evening despite the huge winds, the off and again rain, the darkness, and we soldiered downtown like warriors. Stephen was there. Marlin and Christ were there. Annie was there. Kian and I were both there, I as his pilot.

More pics were taken than these and more are forthcoming, so consider this a little teaser.

For homeland security purposes, you don't know any of these people.

Kian with one of the Village People
(Value Village people).

The desired effect that Kian was looking for,
was dinner and movie at the Blacks' by 9. Done!

Me Hungie

After over 6-months of showing him how, Kian finally made his first real hand sign. What else could it be but "I'm hungry". I've been smacking my lips and tapping my fingers to them since he was an infant, and so it was with great relief that he finally started responding, and he's a lot hungrier than I ever imagined (see video). Now we're going to have to pick up the baby signing book and start learning few more.

The kid is acute. Sometimes it takes us a few minutes to figure out why he is doing something, if ever. The other day he was standing in the living room and he was pointing up to the ceiling. It took me a few moments to realize that you could faintly hear an airplane outside and he was pointing it out. He just learned how to turn off and on certain toggle light switches, and he can climb up and down off the beds, the couch and chairs. Yeah, he's a monkey. And he can now pout -- his bottom lip pulls up and he'll start half crying, running around and looking oh so cute -- I'm wondering where he learned to do that, hmmm, Annie? But it is cute, and so I usually just laugh at him but I'm not sure if that encourages him or not. Sometimes I even give him his way, the little brat.

The darn video won't post, I'll try again later. So here are some pics to tide you over.

In Loving Memory: TJ Langley

TJ, "in pursuit of excellence":
everything had to be just so.
Chiwawa, WA, January 1st, 2009.

On 8-8-08, TJ and Heffe showed up at the house on our first "open baby" after the birth of Kian, the very first of my friends to stop by. Maybe TJ just had to see it to believe it, but he came bearing beers and a book for Kian, "That's Not My Teddy", which to this day is still Kian's most favorite book. "It's paws are too woolly", "Its ears are too fluffy", "It's eyes are too shiny"..... "That's my teddy! His tummy's sooooo furry." These could be excuses that Teej used after a bike race: to win you must not have fluffy. Today I had fluffy.

Its an appropriate gift for Kian, as books were TJ's regalos of choice for all. Years ago at an undisclosed birthday party he gave me a book which introduced me to "The Rider". Talk about influential. This book was passed around my entire family during that Christmas vacation, and its still missing somewhere amongst my Veloce teammates. Wherever it is, on the inside cover is penned a smart-ass getting-old remark from TJ. Once, before I took off on one of several 5-month voyages aboard fishing vessels, I asked TJ for book recommendations and was overwhelmed with advice, and since then we spent many a time talking literature. There are still some recommendations that have gone unread and so I guess I need to get crackalackin: Steinbeck, the Master and Commander series, Hemmingway, are just a few I remember. In his outward life he was all play and sarcasm , but in his inner life he seemed to lean towards the sweeping epics and the poignant tales. And the poetic. But maybe I'll reread The Rider and That's Not My Teddy again first.

Everyone who knew TJ has a favorite Teej story - the guy was unforgettable. A couple of days ago I searched my yahoo account for TJ emails, and it was surreal to reread those that we'd exchanged many years ago. In recent years we didn't spend much solo time together, usually it was with the group, but there was a time when each time that I came through Seattle I'd pull my RV up onto his sidewalk (that was MY parking spot by the way) or swing by while out on a bike ride, and we'd head out on a ride to catch-up. For years it was always the same. His life seemed forever unchanged, and his cat Elvis seemed ageless too. Then shit started happening.

He was mauled by that bear, he got married, he got divorced, and it was sometime in these years that he seemed to change a bit. He was still a materialistic simpleton, prided himself on keeping off the technological superhighway by holding out on email and he held out on getting a cell phone even longer than me, and he was always the wise-cracker, but in his frugality he quit being cheap. He started buying the rounds at the bar, started bringing quality food to the shindigs instead of a box or two of instant stuffing. He seemed to become a better listener, more sensitive, and became a better friend.

In the past few years we did a lot of talking about climbing together but my tour guiding life wasn't compatable with his schedule and we kept missing out. At the beginning of this summer I told him how I was ready to "retire" from the bike racing gig and how, because of Kian, I wanted to focus on getting back to the woods. We planned a climbing trip to the Chiwawa-area, I'd never really been backcountry in my own backyard. I don't know exactly what peaks he had in mind, but I wonder if it was the same area that he turned up missing: Mt Clark, Lauana, Buck? I'll never know for sure, but I got to experience this amazing terrain last weekend with some of my best friends while engaged in the search for the missing TJ. It was hard physically and psychologically, but it was beautiful, fantastic, unbelievable. It was an experience that helped me come to terms with the eventual outcome: we were there, we were engaged, we were optimistic yet realistic, we were frantic and crazy, we were sad yet managed to laugh, make jokes, and enjoy! We enjoyed that place like TJ did the world: with friends, laughing, passionately aware.

The TJ Search Party, Team #1 below Buck
Mountain: waiting for the helicopter moments after
hearing the fate of our beloved friend.

Kian isn't aware of it yet, but he lost a friend too. Almost without exception TJ asked me how the little guy was doing, and was always interested in how Kian and Annie had changed my life. I never asked him why he was so persistent in asking me these types of questions because deep down I knew why. Because he genuinely cared, for one, but I also believe that he hoped and/or fantasized about having a family too: he would have made an exceptional father.

So long Uncle Teej, we'll miss you!

TJ and sister Joy digging out the firepit: someone had to motivate!

Detlef Shrimp

VERSUS

Guess which of the above Detlef's can jam
and which Detlef loves jam?

Thanks Daddy, aren't you having any?

Kian: use the spoon, not your whole head!

You mean like this!

I'm just chubby rigggggghhhttt there!


Parting shot:

Traffic cop gets towed just outside our window today.

Ha ha... so long sucka!

First Word!

Or at least we think so as his annunciation isn't perfect. He speaks like the Andaluz, he eats his consonants. But we are positive that he knows what this thing is and that there is a unique name for it.

Like his daddy and his nephew before him, his first word is....... ball! Well, technically his first word was "hi" and "hello" when he was a mere 3-months old, and he's been barking orders at Mama and Dada for months.

Sometimes it sounds like he's saying bop, or bah, or bob, but its clear he knows what a ball is and that it has a name. But now he wants to know the name for EVERYTHING. He'll point at something and I'll tell him what it is and then he'll try. "Kian, that's a Wireless Internet Receiver, can you say that?". "Bah" or "dah" would be his reply. Thats a cup, thats a phone, thats a carpet, thats a tree, thats the sky, thats enough already. He's going to kill me when he starts in on the "why" phase.

When we were up in Canada we lucked out by pulling into Revelstoke the first day of a two day airing of the Banff Mountain Film Festival. We hit the first day's showing and had to take Kian for lack of a baby-sitter -- and with permission, of course -- and Kian was a bit of a pain through the first third of the show. One of us had to hangout with him in the walkway to keep him occupied although he loved the loud music and some of the action sequences. Anyway, the guy sitting in front of us good-naturedly turned back and told us that he bet that Kian was going to be a singer and we think its because of his guttural intonations. He is constantly singing in his throat. I guess now would be a good time to introduce him to phonetic languages like Vietnamesse and Mandarin, as well as Tibetan chanting and Mongolian throat singing. We'll get right on that.

Our little throat singer.

What else is new in all things Kian? Well, his Daddy is a little happier though often preoccupied now that his cycling-related ailments, whatever they were (or weren't), are over. I got in a few big rides last week and weekend and I was able to make a few "efforts", and all feels good. Let's hope it keeps up, and all that my body needed was a little downtime from a season of racing. Prior to this summer I calculated having 2-1/2 years of constant competition in one of my sports: cyclocross racing season to nordic ski racing season to road racing season, and repeat. Can't really blame the bod for bailing on me.


Kiki LOVES to brush his teeth/mouth, and we are relieved that he values good oral hygeine. But unfornately I can't get him to floss and its such a shame because it would take like 5-seconds to hit his 6 teeth.

No worries: with the exception of this one
picture, Kian was always strapped in.

Belated Vids

We have potentially dozens of videos to post of the little man doing his things. A moving picture is worth millions and millions of words. Enjoy, if you have the patience.